Really, as I see it, the problems of humanity all boil down to one thing: the limitations of the physical body. If those limitations were removed, then I think most of the problems of humanity would just go poof! About the only problems left would be those inherent in communication.

In other words, the limitations inherent of the body are what limit personal survival and the limitations of communication are what limit interaction with others.

I totally see were you're going with this. Teleportation would mean not having to "waste time getting from point A to point B".

So I guess I didn't expand enough on the concept of "designing and creating bodies". If we could design a body that could survive, unassisted in intergalactic space, or in the center of a star? Or that could travel faster than light? (Which would necessitate removing that pesky light speed limitation from the rules of the universe.) In other words, the body itself would be the transporter.

So maybe I should have said "transform" insted of "create".

And just a note here, there is a SciFi book ("The Silkie" by A.E. Van Voght) that postulates exactly such a bodily transformation capability. And there is also another SciFi book/story (I don;t remember where I read it) whose entire premise was about the problems of security inherent in the concept of "personal teleporters".

Yes, it would be, which then makes it supportive of my claim.

Whether or not they “should have” is irrelevant to my point.

Well excuse my typo. (Or not – your choice).

Do you really consider your intelligence to be insulted by a typo???

This is a perfect example of where you appear to be coming from – looking for things to object to, not trying understand.

As I said in the part of the quote that you conveniently mined out, if I were doing that, then yes, I would be hypocritical. So unless you can show me where I objected to him thinking sometrhing, then you’re just fabricating stuff to object to out of thin air.

Very interesting question Abra.

I think the first thing I would suggest, if I were in a position to have input into the creation, would be to fix "language". I'd make it so that there was only one language and one meaning for every word and everything would have a single word that referred to it and only it. That way you could go anywhere in the universe and be able to communicate easily with anyone you every encountered.

Although, I even better than that would be some sort of "controllable telepathy" where communication did not require any physical medium at all, but could still be turned on and off at will - so you didn't have to hear everyone elses thoughts all the time and other's could only hear what thoughs of yours you wanted them to hear.

Secondly I would make it so that people could design and create any type of body they wanted and transfer their "self" (whatever one considers that to be) from body to body. Kinda like being able to design and create any kind of vehicle one wanted and switch between them whenever you wanted based on where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do.

Other than that, I can't think of any other "really big" changes I'd make.

Yeah, I guess if were younger it would probably grab me a little harder. I guess I've just seen to many shows with the exact same basic format and the exact same basic theme and the exact same basic characters. Maybe if it had a little more CGI. What's a hard core SciFan of 50 years gonna do???

Mine too! Ever since I first saw a picture of them.

Oh but personal experience is evidence. From a first person perspective, it is the only evidence there can possibly be. And the OP request specifically stated the first person perspective . "I want..."

Now the definition you gave included the phrase “ground for belief”. And if you understand how dictionaries work, you will know that phrase is intended to mean exactly the same thing as the next phrase - “proof”, and the previous phrase – “that which tends to prove or disprove something”, and the word being defined – “evidence”. So right off the bat you're working with both subjective ("belief") and an indeterminate ("tends") concepts.

Now since the word “for”, in this case, means – “suiting the purposes or needs of”, and the question specifies the target of the action of “showing” to be the OP (i.e. first person), the OP’s request can only be fulfilled by “ground+
/ that suites the personal purposes or needs of the OP’s belief in a designer”.

And that is entirely a first person perspective, i.e. personal experience. There is no second or third person anywhere in that portion of the OP request.

So not only does personal experience constitute evidence in and of itself, but in this case it is a necessary requirement for evidence.

Ok, so you’ve shown it. So what? I’ve clearly shown on several occasions that order does equate to design, and vice-versa. But again, so what?

If I can’t see what you’ve shown, and you can’t see what I’ve shown, and we’ve both shown it on several occasions, then why keep beating the same dead horse.

If you’re actually trying to convince someone of something, then why keep saying, over and over, that you’ve already shown it? Or are you expecting that doing the same thing over and over will somehow have a different result?

Abra saidWell I don't know if I would go quite that far. But it is true that it is totally abstract and made-up by humans.

Bingo!

Exactly! That is inherent in the scientific method. It cannot look "outside the box". By it's very definition it must stay in the box.

It depends - are things that don’t follow any known laws of physics considered to be external to the universe???

Just watched the premiere episode. Not all that great. Looks like it will only take few a episodes to settle into the standard soap opera format that almost all SciFi series' eventually turn into. But it's really no worse than most of the stuff on TV. And it has some pretty cool CGI.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. The more understanding the better.

Very well said.

Exactly, And I think that is in the forefront of the minds of those who are opposed to it.

If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then what can we expect from a system that hands over more and more power to a select few?

Good question. But an even more interesting question is did one actually come before the other?

Personally, I think the very concept of telepathy transcends space and time. And there is even some scientific evidence that indicates exactly that.

So here we are at one of the fundamental anomalies that plagues moderm physics - "instantaneous connection".

Welcome to the world of Quantum Mechanics.

EDIT: Sorry for the Off topic. We now resume our regularly scheduled program.

I'm wondering what this concept of "default" means. After looking in dictionary.com, the closest definition I can find that seems to fit the topic under discussion is a computer term that means: "... a course of action that a program or operating system will take, when the user or programmer specifies no overriding value or action"

So in any case, there must be some presupposition involved. Someone somewhere decided that "if there is no other direction indicated by some external factor, we'll always head in the dirction of _____".

It's like it's based on inertia - once started in a given direction, we'll always continue in that given direction until some external event causes us to change direction.

And the whole track of this debate seesm to always revolve around a disagreement on what the default should be.

So I'd like to ask any and all of the proponents of the "no designer" view, what is your default?

Personally, my default is "me". That is the most basic, fundamental, irreducible foundation for all my evaluations of everything. To me that is Occam's Razor at it's finest.

But it seems that the "scientific default" is "others".

It just seems kind weird to me. It's as if "I" is purposefully excluded from any evaluation of anything.

This is an interesting subject that has been just recently been recognized as a bit of a flaw in the currently accepted, mainstream "scientific method".

As far as I'm concerned, it amounts to, quite simply, ignoring relevant evidence.

Wux saidJust for my own edification, how does something like this fit into your world view:

“I have a purpose of going to the store. My reason for that purpose is to get something to eat.”

I’m not wanting to debate it, just wanting to understand you viewpoint.

Ah, ok. I have a hard time differentiating between what different people mean by the various terms that they use - such as "soul", "spirit" "essence", "consciousness" etc. To me they're all the same.

So I was thinking of "soul" in the sense of "I am a soul".

But that's not they way you defined it so...

I don't consider "what is kept after the body dies" to be "a body" in any sense of the word that I can imagine. So in that sense, I would say that I don't have a soul.